Are You Facebook’s Bitch?

This blog post is not about the recent revelation that Facebook tweeked news feeds to see if that would change user emotions. Compared to what we read about in the real world every day, that would have about as much impact as peeing in the ocean.

Rather, we are here to discuss another ‘experiment’ brought to you by the same Facebook group, which unfortunately didn’t get quite as much ink and attention.

How about a bunch of Facebook researchers who deliberately lock you out of your Facebook Account just to see how many hoops you’ll jump through to get yourself re-activated? Yeah, really.

Ms. Sandberg seems to be “Leaning Out” on this one.

Oh sure, it had a happy ending.

“In the end, no users lost access permanently”.

No mention of how many hours these hapless subjects spent in frustration, trying to get re-activated.

Now let’s stop and think about this for a second.

Whoever designed this ‘experiment’ would have tested a variety of re-authorization techniques ranging from very simple, to very hard and complex. So if you were lucky, you just put in your birthdate and viola, the lights come back on. But if you are unlucky, you get to go thru a long series of complex authorization tests, perhaps even having to call the ‘phone tree’ for some tech support.

Who knows, at that point they might have been tempted to see how long you would wait on hold before hanging up.

But no worries, it’s all in the Terms of Service.

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Full disclosure, the author does not, and never has had, a Facebook account.